I see you’re coming again and I see what’s coming after

Here’s what I bought on Bandcamp this weekend:

A lot of folks will check this record out based on the headline “produced by Julien Baker” but they will keep listening because these 13 tracks are just that good. These songs are cinematic, shimmering, lush, vulnerable, and tender. There are stories of identity and dreams and the dissolution of friendships. Images of distorted reflections, in funhouse mirrors and rippling water, are reminders that looks can be deceiving. One thing is for sure: this record is the truth.

“What’s the signal? What’s the sound?” It’s the Perennial sound! British Invasion garage rock performed with a seismic wave of energy. This band has both style and substance in spades, and they are back with a between-records EP titled as a nod to The Beatles. It includes an original banger, a Kinks cover, a track the band describes as “an experimental sound collage with French New Wave samples and dueling drum machine patterns” plus two remixes, one each from Chris Walla (ex-Death Cab) and Cody Votolato of The Blood Brothers.

If you get the chance, their live show of controlled chaos is not to be missed.

Dreamy pop with occasional big grungy guitars, this record has been well-reviewed for good reason. It lives in the quiet, tender moments, while allowing every flourish to breathe, which really brings her out her strength as a musician and songwriter. Those flourishes are filled with instruments finding their place to shine, including cello, violin, trumpet, and lap steel. Varkhive, grab your swords.

I thought this was pretty good even before the “Black Parade” parody.

The sunk cost fallacy

I’d like to think the circle of people who support this administration is getting smaller and tighter every day. That should be a good thing, but it’s still a pretty big circle, and everyone in there is getting crazier. The performative lying, an obvious and important hallmark of authoritarian regimes, just keeps getting bigger and wilder. It will continue apace. At this point, most people continuing to defend him and his actions fall into one of two categories: they’re close to him, or their brand relies on being a fan of his. The boot is hanging there, and they’re all desperate to get their licks in. They’re going on TV or posting on X to say this is all part of the plan, you just have to wait, we’re almost there.

We elected a person who doesn’t know how things work and doesn’t care to learn. He believes his stupid thoughts are all brilliant and does not accept no for an answer. We are all dealing with the fallout from that now.

This weekend, the markets crashed. He played golf.

But we have to look past politics to help frame what we’re seeing. I think QAnon is more instructive here. For years now, the truth has always been juuust around the corner to Q fans who believe that nonsense. The sunk cost fallacy at work. Don’t give up now, the truth is almost here! Here in 2025, the country is juuust about the get rich! is the new carrot that’s dangling just out of reach. But it’s not real. The carrot is a lie. It doesn’t even make any sense. The goalposts keep moving. They’ve been taken off the field, removed from the stadium, and thrown into the ocean, and they’re just going to keep floating.

I get why his cabinet cronies are on board. Proximity to power has got to be one crazy drug. But these losers whose whole brand is blind allegiance to Dear Leader are really sick. Since these rubes have made and staked their careers and their brands from blindly agreeing with anything and everything he does, saying anything to keep the grift going, they have no choice but to keep doing so. They are load-bearing podcaster/posters. The only problems Donald Trump wants to solve are his personal problems. If something doesn’t stand to benefit him, he doesn’t care now and he never has. That means all these chuds have to pretend that Trump’s problems are theirs too, which then makes it our problem too.

This is because it’s bad faith all the way down for these clowns. For them, they have to move forward with the lies, because the alternative is admitting everything about themselves is fake and always has been. They have strapped themselves to a rocket and there’s no way off that doesn’t destroy their livelihood and their version of credibility, which is not the same as real world credibility. It’s easier, more convenient, and more financially lucrative for them to instead continue building their imagined world, even if it’s not consistent with whatever they say the day before. It’s why Disneyland doesn’t have a section between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland called Real Life Land. Everything there is fake, everything there is about escapism. That’s perfectly fine for a theme park. There, it’s all for show, that’s the whole point. But outside those gates, this magical thinking is ruining the world.

Burning down the house to cook a steak

Someone said these tariffs are like burning down the house to cook a steak. I’m no chef but I don’t think believe the right way to solve the problem of an uncooked steak. These desperate liars will keep saying computer jobs are bad for us, bringing back factory jobs is going to save this country. Yesterday the Secretary of Commerce went on TV and said “millions and millions” of Americans would soon be screwing the screws in to make iPhones. Sounds like everyone gets to make their own iPhone? Insane.

While they go on about these supposed jobs, remember that exactly zero of these guys are going to be lining up to do those jobs. A lot of people should want a computer job, which might be tedious or boring or whatever, sure, but it’s safe and can provide for a family, especially compared to a dangerous factory floor. We’re so close to one of them actually saying the children yearn for the mines! Also, back when factories were employing millions of Americans there was a tradeoff: in exchange for doing that probably tough, maybe shitty, definitely thankless work, those folks had a good union job that paid well and allowed them to have a solid middle-class life. Bringing them back now, while simultaneously busting unions and doing away with regulations, would not offer anything even close to that kind of life. There would be a child labor boom, black lung would make a comeback, and people would be dying on the job. So really, those jobs aren’t really even what they’re nostalgic for. What they actually miss is how their parents and grandparents could have a decent life because of unions, high taxes, and social policies. They didn’t need to take on debt and could retire comfortably at 65.

There might be a way to bring these jobs back to the US and make life better for the average worker, but this scheme of theirs is not the answer. If they really wanted to bring back high-wage jobs for people who work with their hands, construction would be the place to start. We badly need to build more housing in this country. Not only are they not working on that issue, they’re putting huge tariffs on the Canadian lumber industry that we rely on for building.

The load-bearing podcaster/poster industrial complex must fall

It’s kind of funny to hear “Kamala warned us he would do exactly this!” because yeah, that’s true, but Trump himself said he would do this! For some reason people still don’t take him seriously. When he gets a crazy idea, he just goes for it. Canada, Greenland, tariffs, any of it. It’s been his whole thing as long as he’s been a public figure, which is a very long time! He is pathological and sociopathic. It is the problem of everyone in the world that a narcissistic racist grandpa whose brain hasn’t learned any new information since 1991 is the most powerful person in the world, and it’s even worse because he just keeps getting away with everything. He is going to keep pushing until he dies. (I’m quite sure that even prison would not restrain him. He’d still be their president even from behind bars.) I mean, I guess if I was insane and kept doing crazy shit and getting away with it, I’d keep going too? I don’t know.

He said he was going to crash the economy on purpose. He’s even bragged about it multiple times on TruthSocial in the past week, because that’s exactly what he’s doing. Yet some people will still ask what he’s up to, or pretend not to know. It’s not that difficult. He knows that by throwing the world markets into chaos, he has gained an immense amount of power. This is mob rule. He wants world leaders to come to him groveling. He will ask “what can you do for me?” Then they will be in his debt forever. (One thing he will never ask is “what can you do to help America?”) Meanwhile, him and his rich buddies will buy the spare parts of America up at cheap prices, and the rest of us will pay more for everything for the rest of our lives, and everyday life will be more unsafe for the rest of our lives. (It should be noted that he doesn’t have the authority for these tariffs. Congress has abdicated their duty completely here and could decide to stop this at any moment. Every Republican has allowed themselves to be cucked. They’re probably getting off on it. I don’t believe in kink-shaming, except for right now in this instance.)

Let’s play out the future here. Let’s say a company says ‘yikes, the tariffs are rough! We better sink millions or maybe even billions into building manufacturing plants in the US! Let us start this long, arduous process that will take many years for us to complete!’ Well, when (I will not say if) the next President takes office, they can and will reverse all of these tariffs. Now that company has all these projects somewhere along the way in the building process, and the whole reason for their existence just vanishes. Poof. They know this. They won’t be fooled into it. And that doesn’t even account for the fact that the extreme volatility of Trump’s thoughtless decision-making has already made it a terrible time for companies to invest in the US. It’s just that none of this makes any sense.

We are ruled by a mad king. He promised to solve his fans’ problems, yet he is only focused on his own. He promised to immediately lower prices, yet he increased prices. He promised to cut taxes, yet he singlehandedly introduced one of the largest tax increased in history. He promised to immediately end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, yet he did not end either. And yet his subjects can only praise him for the great work he’s done.

The load-bearing podcaster/poster industrial complex must fall.

Handing out some prestigious awards

Hot tip of the week: if you’re still posting on X and you say you’re against fascism, you’re not really anti-fascist!

Sexy people of the week: huge shoutout to the millions of people who went out this weekend and protested. I hope everyone is feeling as inspired as I am by what I saw today and that for some people it was just the beginning and not the end of their activism. Two things can be true at the same time here: protesting alone isn’t enough, and millions of people in the streets is a great thing. That so many people took time from their weekend to go stand in a field or by a road — maybe alone or maybe with a friend, maybe holding a sign, maybe feeling nervous or confused — really means something. About 1% of the country took to the streets. Regime collapse happens around 3.5%. We can do that.

Text message of the week:

I recommend reading every word of this message from a principal who had three students taken by ICE, and then read Marisa’s story about it.

“Please, think about how long every hour feels for a third grader in a detention center” is a sentence that should shock the conscious of everyone who reads it. Despicable.

My wife says I need to read more “fun” books because my last two reads were Black Pill and Character Limit. She’s right. I’m currently reading Hannah Arendt and Careless People, a memoir about working at Facebook. I used to love fiction. I hope I can get back to it. So on that note, send some recs? I love sci-fi, and the last author I really loved was Emily St. John Mandel, if that helps.

Thanks. I love you.

_{(Header photo via Cos.)}